Museum Week 2015: InspirationMW

It's Museum Week 2015 on Twitter.  Check it out.  Each day of the week has a specific theme on which we are encouraged to tweet.  Today's theme is inspiration and this post stems from a conversation I had with @ROMToronto wherein I said my favourite souvenir of the ROM was a career in museums.

@SheratonYYZ @ROMtoronto My favourite souvenir from the ROM is a career in museums carved from a life-long love affair with the place.
— Maya H. (@mambolica) March 24, 2015

We would love to post that blog @mambolica! Maybe for #inspirationMW? #souvenirsMW @SheratonYYZ
— Royal Ontario Museum (@ROMtoronto) March 24, 2015

If you're at all familiar with my career path, long and winding as it has been to this point, you'll know I was already working in museums before I decided I wanted to make it my life's work, and the Royal Ontario Museum is central to the story.  If you'll allow the anthropomorphising, the ROM was kind of like the mysterious relative in children's stories; you know the type: the one who seemingly takes no interest in the protagonists, but turns out to have been supportive and guiding all along. 

I do not work for the ROM now; in fact, this coming August, it will be 10 years since I left.  When I left, I went in bitterness.  I left during a difficult time.  2005 was the peak of the renovations which saw a giant crystal (some have called it a 'space pyramid' others an 'iceberg') attached to an historic, if traditional Romanesque and Byzantine-styled building.  Change in any institution, especially one steeped in history and academia, can cause paroxysms of angst, fear, and anger.  I left to take a 4-month internship at the Manitoba Museum, for which I had requested an academic leave of absence, not unheard of, but my supervisor said no, so I said "buh-bye."  Not only was I watching beloved gallery spaces being torn apart and staff being reorganised, I personally felt slighted.  I left.  It turned out to be the best thing I could do.

The reason I'm sharing the negative stuff is because it's part of the story of how the ROM inspired my decisions.  Inspiration can come from wonderful, positive events, but it can also come from painful, negative experiences, too.  We draw inspiration from many places, and for some people, negative emotions can be very powerful tools to rise up above and do great things.  I don't see my leaving the ROM negatively now, and the anger I felt during the renovation upheaval has dissipated.  Rather, like a grown-up child leaving their parents' home, or the fledgeling bird leaving the nest, leaving the ROM was what I needed to do, and it took equal measures opportunity and dissatisfaction to make it happen.

When I left, I had been employed in front-line work and education for seven years, which for a 20-something is a long time with a single employer, but my relationship with the ROM actually stretched far back into my early childhood.  I first visited when I was 5 or 6, I think, right after the museum re-opened following its 1982 renovation.  We had just moved to Toronto from Brooklyn, NY.  Although my earliest museum memories are from the American Museum of Natural History, which remains a favourite museum of mine, the ROM's dinosaurs were mounted in mind-blowing dioramas and had cool lighting and sound effects.  There was a rattle snake whose tail rattled when you stepped on a certain floor tile.  It was awesome!  And there was this brilliant little gallery space in the sub-basement, called 'The Discovery Room' where kids (and adults) could explore the artefactual world though touch and interaction.  A visit to the ROM was an all-day affair for curious kids and I spent many, many days exploring.

My mom signed us up as members in 1984 and I remained a member until I moved across the country and was living in Whitehorse, some 22 years later.  Christmas, March Break, PD days, Members' Previews saw us paying a visit.  We dined in the Members' Lounge.  And when I was a little older, my mom started sending me to ROM camp.  It was expensive, so it was balanced with other ways to fill my summers while my mom worked, but I can look back and recognise that it was hands-down the most creative, thought-provoking, intelligent camp experience I ever had.  I learned about photography, biology, archaeology, different cultures, architecture, and so much more.  It was a place where a nerdy girl, picked on at school, could be surrounded by other intellectually curious kids from all over the city.  It was a place where I fit in.

Those early experiences directed me to choose the ROM as the place where would do my co-op.  I remember that the co-op placement office had a hard time figuring out how to get me in, as most of the available work experience placements went to university students.  I remember being interviewed for a placement with the Ethnography department.  I was heartbroken when I didn't get the co-op, because I would have been working with archaeological collections, and I was so sure I wanted to be an archaeologist.  But then I got a call from the Outreach department.  "Do you have a portfolio?" they asked.  I told them yes, though I didn't, yet.  My mom helped me put a little portfolio together from the work I did in my studio arts classes.  I took it in for my interview, which I don't even remember now, but I got the co-op placement and suddenly, three half-days a week I was spending working with artists and designers, writers, and a taxidermist, building a travelling exhibit, and repairing and cleaning school case resource boxes.  It was heaven.  Each shift was supposed to reflect my school day schedule, but I usually stayed late.  I was surrounded by glorious weirdos, just like me, and they immersed me in their wonderful, creative world where the core purpose was to create content that could be sent out all over the province to engage kids, adults, even whole communities. 

I didn't understand the value of that work until years later.  Growing up, I was spoiled for high quality school programs and overnight field trips to other places.  I have since taught museum programs for diverse populations and demographics in Toronto, Winnipeg, Whitehorse, and most recently London, Ontario.  I have met people whose only childhood museum experience was receiving a travelling school resource box from the ROM, because they lived on a reserve in northern Ontario.  I have seen how outreach can amaze and inspire as much as a physical visit, sometimes more.  But, as a teenager doing a co-op at the ROM, I just knew what I was doing was fun and it meant I could do it in my favourite place. 

It's no wonder that as a third-year student, living in my first appartment and suddenly needing food money, that I found myself answering an ad for part-time work selling memberships at the ROM.  I'd only ever worked in the deli of a small grocery and mucking out a horse barn.  I had no sales experience.  But I had solid 15 years of ROM experience and probably knew its floorplan better than most of its own staff.  I was hired on the basis of my enthusiasm, how I gushed about the ROM's importance as a destination for people of all ages, but especially the coveted family market.  I talked about the ROM in a way that made people want to go there.

There have been two geographical constants in my life for which I give equal credit in 'raising' me.  The first is my family cottage in the ancient Laurentian mountains, and the second is the Royal Ontario Museum.  I'm not saying the ROM is the best museum in the world, or that it is a model of museological perfection, because it isn't.  Its history is not without controversy, its directors have made difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions, it has objects in its collections and on display that have frought, contested histories, it has mounted exhibitions that baffled, and occasionally offended, its audiences.  At best, some of these have become incredible learning opportunities for other museums, designers, curators, historians, etc., usually, they become interesting (albeit sometimes heated) conversations.  No museum has a perfect record, and I'm sure there are plenty of detractors out there ready to argue with me over the ROM's strengths and importance as a landmark museum in Canada.  I accept that.  At the very least, the ROM continues to strive for excellence, for engagement, for education, creativity, discovery, and inspiration.

I'm just one person who was deeply inspired by a museum.  But I have taken that inspiration and run with it.  If I can inspire someone to look at history in a new light, to dig a little deeper into a story, to engage in their community, to look at a challenging subject with fresh eyes, or to make a point of visiting a museum when they might have done something else, then I'm doing it right.  I'm good with it.  Leaving the ROM put me on an amazing journey that has taken several turns, and like the museum itself, occasionally not without its challenges, but I am grateful now to that supervisor who wouldn't grant the leave of absence.  I love returning to the ROM now, an alumna, if you will, feeling proud of what I did and accomplished in my years there, even though I was just one of hundreds of worker bees in big, complex hive.  The ROM was the catalyst for my passion and helped me become the person I am today.  I won't become wealthy for working in museums, but I will be doing what I love, and I will be rich with passion, experience, and inspiration. 

Thanks, ROM, for always having my back and encouraging me to do awesome things, even when I neither realised it nor appreciated it.

#inspirationMW #souvenirsMW

Thanks Mom

When I talk about my memorable early museum moments, I talk about my experiences at the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), and the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam).  I could also talk about my mother, Claire.  My mom is the person who schlepped me to every museum I attended until I was probably 8 or 10 years old, and believe me when I tell you, that was a LOT of museum visits.  So, on the occasion of her birth, which is a pretty significant milestone corresponding to the Second World War in the Netherlands (also the place of her birth), I want to say "thank you" for all that schlepping !

My mom comes from a long line of Dutch culture and history lovers, educators, and intellectuals, so it's not surprising that she grew up steeped in art, culture, galleries, museums, theatre and such.  From before I was speaking in sentences, I was thrown headlong into the world where I'd end up building this career.  No matter what challenges life threw at my mom, she found time to share this wonderful world, it's diversity, history, technology, and beauty with me.  I still cherish these outings with her, though they happen far less frequently due to geographical separation, and we often make due with richly plated art books on the sofa, when I come home for a brief visit.

Here's a recent selfie of us, taken at the ROM, after a wonderful, museumish day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CLAIRE !

Making Culture Matter 2015

I want to congratulate the students of Centennial College's Culture & Heritage Institute on planning and producing an exceptional symposium.  Making Culture Matter 2015 was, hands down, the most well thought-out one-day professional or academic (in this case both) learning event I have had the pleasure attending.  That I was invited to speak is irrelevant.  I believe that whomever the organisers found to speak in my timeslot would have been entertaining and informative.  Every talk and presentation was excellent, from Keynote, to discussion panel.

One of the most interesting aspects for me, beyond the content of the discussions, was which established professionals were in attendance.  Many of the Centennial students' internship placement supervisors were present, all representing Toronto-based heritage and archival organisations.  These organisations were large and small, and the professionals involved represented directors, programmers, curators, educators, costumers, archivists, and collections managers.  It was refreshing to see such a diverse mix of immersed professionals, working at all institutional levels.  Many of the program faculty were also present, which shows everyone how committed they are to their students' success.  I was impressed.  The students themselves were on the whole interested, articulate, mature, and enthusiastic.  Again, I was impressed.*

Often when one attends large annual conferences, especially in Canada, one finds that the professionals are in managerial, directorial, and Board level.  It's usually simple math: conferences are expensive and travel budgets often go to those controlling the departmental budgets.  Although larger conferences try to entice smaller museums and non-managerial staff, the reality is that few museums have the resources to send multiple representatives to conferences.  Sometimes, travel grants can help, but not always.

Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is that I really enjoyed seeing some of the GTA's smaller, community museums represented and actively participating.   

Also, on a personal point, it was pretty awesome to be a museum rockstar for a day.  My presentation, An Engaging Paradox on museum engagement, was really well received. Remember, like Muppet performers, we, as museum professionals "are the glorious weirdos with our hands up the bums of our museums."


* I am a graduate of Fleming College's Museum Management & Curatorship post-graduate program, so I'm always biased in its favour, but I am pretty confident that Centennial's Culture & Heritage students graduate with very similar practical and theoretical skills.

Making Culture Matter 2015 Symposium

This Friday, March 6th, I'll be presenting at Hart House, U of Toronto, about one of my favourite subjects: museum engagement !

I'll be in good company, too, sharing the day with Keynote speaker Christine Castle, Museum Consultant and owner/editor of the Museum Education Monitor, Melissa Smith of the AGO, Elka Weinstein of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture & Sport, Christina Kerr of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Karen Edwards & Ilena Aldini-Messina of the Spadina House Museum, and Elysse Leonard of TIFF.

Learn more about this exciting symposium put on by the Culture & Heritage Institute of Centennial College by visiting the Making Culture Matter website.  There's still time to register. 

Hopefully I'll see you there!

Getting Out There

Any time I get the opportunity to participate in outreach activities, I jump.  In fact, just this past week, I was manning a table at London's Heritage Fair, put on by the London Heritage Council and the London Public Library.  Whenever possible, I make the commitment to attend.  This, I've been told, is somewhat unusual.

There are lots of reasons, often good ones, for why a curator might not want to participate in community events, such as a tight deadline, a collections committee meeting, grant-writing season.  Plenty of museum curators and collections managers use any number of similar excuses to avoid going out into public.  It is to their detriment, and the museums they represent, I believe, that so many curatorial staff choose not to interact with the public.  Even worse, sometimes it is the prevailing culture or attitude of the museum board or management that keeps the curatorial staff from interacting with the public.  The worst response any museum decision maker can give, when asked if curatorial staff can attend a community event, is "It's a waste of time."

No, it is not. That the staff responsible for developing the museum collection and its exhibitions should not attend community events is irresponsible.  Who are we developing them for, if not our communities?  How can we understand what our communities are comprised of if we never interact with them?  

By all means, send a marketing type or intern, perhaps a volunteer, to stand at the booth to smile and chat.   Often, it's they who are more outgoing than the backroom, storage vault-loving academic types, but my feeling is they should be sent along to support the curators and collections managers in public. 

Manning the well-appointed SORM table at a community event, 2013.

When the thronging masses come to a museum's outreach display, its artefact touch-table, set up in library corridors, or community centres, they want to talk to someone who can go beyond the website pitch, or basic history.  They want someone who can actually provide an answer when they ask their burning question about great-grandma's wedding dress, the yardsale painting they found, or the chunk of rock they discovered in a creek. 

I know, I know, there isn't a registrar working in museums who went into that field so they can talk to the public.  I know collections managers and curators can get very protective about people breathing on their artefacts.  I get it.  That's why it's best to send along a social talker, that marketing person, or maybe the volunteer co-ordinator, or the student intern.  Not only can they get snacks, or hold the fort when you have to pee, but they can do the hard part, the small talk and endless smiling.

And, when talking fails, or for the shy, anti-social audience, make sure you have some interesting stuff on your table that can speak to them without demanding they make eye-contact (this is helpful for socially awkward registrars, too).  I have a box of objects that I use mainly for events, durable, stable, (sometimes) touchable objects.  I have several didactic pieces which were created specifically for shows and events.  Sometimes I even bring swag that people can take with them, you know, little things, like bookmarks or postcards or pins.  I always have a stack of brochures.

But, most importantly, I bring myself, the curator, the closest thing to an expert the museum has, and I bring my willingness to not only talk to people, but to listen to them.  It's a way to find out what people like, what they're interested in, their knowledge level about your museum or subject.  It's more than just demographics research, it's real, tangible engagement.  And it's really, really important.

Family History vs Genealogy

Over the last 10 years, I've delved into the murky waters of family history or genealogy more than a few times. When I worked at Museum London, I had numerous offers of donation that required some geneaological mapping in order to fully comprehend the provenance accompanying the objects.  Sometimes the donors supplied their own family trees, but at other times I was expected to take down names and relationships and map them out myself.  Genealogy can be quite complicated, but when inheritance comes into an object's provenance, it's incredibly useful for figuring out who had what, when, and often where.  Other times, family histories, which could be a little more vague, sufficed, especially if the family was well known in the region, or if only one or two closely related family members factored into a donation's importance.

I work with family histories and receive research requests from genealogists at my current museum, too.  In this case, because the Secrets of Radar Museum has a strong bias toward military history, it often comes as requests for assistance filling out the sketch of someone's military service records.  I don't spend much time tracking down the personal history, but provide context and explanations for the places they might have been posted.  For me, the best part about history are the people.  People make history, afterall.  Events are recorded and remembered by people.

I have colleagues and friends who are trained genealogists and they really are good at what they do.  I have, on occasion, relied on them, myself, because they usually have subscriptions to fancy pants software, or a special attention to detail that escapes me when I'm tracking five generations of men all named William.  Plenty of people do their own research, tracking down obscure branches of their family.  My first cousin, once removed (so my mother's cousin) on my maternal side, has done a lot of research into her family lineage, which is fascinating.  That half of the family is Scottish and parish records helped her trace back.  For me, my paternal side is a lot more complicated, what with waves of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe filtered through Ellis Island and Mexico.  If I were to really go into it, I would hire a professional, but for now I content myself with a general knowledge of that part of my family history. 

If you're interested in genealogy and family history, the Library and Archives of Canada have a helpful site that explores both forms of familial tracking.  Be careful, though, just sketching out a short family tree can be a massive rabbit hole from which you may never return !

The Old Funding Model

Today was an important day at the museum I manage, The Secrets of Radar Museum. An important day because an event took place that may have a tremendous bearing on its future. The event was a meeting with representatives from the Province's largest funder, to which SoRM submitted a grant request back in November. The interview means the application made it to the short list, but the Museum has been here before and we all know there's no guarantee the application will be accepted. It's a request for funding over two years, not of an extraordinary amount, to fund most of two part-time salaries and materials that SoRM will use to undertake a massive collections inventory and accessibility overhaul. So, for an hour and a half this morning, I sat with a board member and did my best to answer difficult questions about how this funding will increase future sustainability.

How do you honestly answer that in a way that doesn't make potential funders run away screaming?

The Canadian museum sector has been struggling with this question since the mid-90s. For a number of the big museums, it seems like they have started to find a public-private balance, but for small museums, especially those not run by their municipalities or attached to another parent institution, the challenge is only getting worse. The current funding climate is very bad, with fewer dollars spread across more recipients and increased bureaucracy between the need and communicating the need. How does a museum like SoRM, with its unique, but rather a-typical subject, find sustainability? Its traditional membership has dwindled; the veterans who were its beating heart are themselves passing into history. Although the story it shares is important and timely, particularly given the World War II anniversaries and the popularity of TV shows like Bletchley Circle or the recent film The Imitation Game, how do you convince new funders that they should support a weird little museum over a flagship art gallery, youth-at-risk program, or cancer care unit?

I don't have answers for those questions. I spend a lot of my time trying to come up with fixes for the Museum's funding problem. I work quite hard to drum up interest and support, to varying degrees of success. I communicate my passion for its mission and mandate in everything I do, but I can't answer a question about how this incredibly necessary project will truly affect the Museum's bottom line, because, we in the museum sector have largely been trained to see value, merit, worthiness in ways that don't translate easily into standard business models.  So, SoRM will wait with the relentless optimism to which me and so many of my peers subscribe, to hear back about the funding decision, meanwhile struggling to make ends meet and continuing to strive for awesomeness.